How to read a good book

　　A friend once asked me a question about reading novels. He said that American writer Carver’s novels were read several times but he still couldn’t understand them. How should novels be read? I think we can use a biographical method, such as reading Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”, we need to see how she grew up from childhood to adulthood, at what stage of her life did she write this book, and what problems she encountered , why she wrote this novel, and what kind of reality projection the characters in it are.
　　The book is derived from the life of the author. Jane Austen was never married and wrote “Pride and Prejudice” in her early 20s. At that time, most British girls at this age were married. Many questions. The heroine Elizabeth shows a search for love in the novel, so reading the novel depends on the author’s biography, which is one of them.
　　The second is to understand why the social environment in which the author lived at that time gave rise to the work “Pride and Prejudice”. After the British Industrial Revolution, a large number of factories appeared, more workers flooded into the city, the city became more and more crowded, the living environment became worse and worse, and the British nobles began to move to the countryside. Aristocratic living habits such as balls, reading sessions, concerts and other cultural forms were introduced to the countryside, bringing some new culture and elements to the countryside, and the rural people absorbed and accepted these new knowledge, new art, and new Conceptual and cultural gaps are gradually being bridged.
　　In “Pride and Prejudice”, there were reading clubs that did not exist in the countryside before. The arrogance and prejudice had no reason. This was a microcosm of the social development at that time. So read a little bit of social history to understand the social context in which a book appears. In addition, we also need to understand some other literary works at that time, so that we can understand the differences and changes between a work and its previous and later works, so that we can discover its value. For example, reading a novel can start from the author’s biography, knowing the author’s life experience, social background and literary background at that time.
　　Reading requires a lot of hard work. To really read a book well, you don’t just read this book after you get it, but you have to read a series of books related to it, and then you can say that you have mastered this book. Read it well and understand it thoroughly.